


No One Left Behind

by telliefan (captainamergirl)



Category: General Hospital
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 09:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6901024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainamergirl/pseuds/telliefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia and Johnny escape town with the help of an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**_We’ve got to make a decision  
We leave tonight or live and die this way_**  
  
 **Part 1/3**  
  
“We’re leaving, Claudia, it’s the only way,” Johnny Zacchara said as he grasped his sister’s arm and yanked her forcefully towards the bedroom door.   
  
“No, John, I’m safe. I’ve got Sonny’s baby inside me, remember?” she said. She sounded more calm and self-assured than she felt but Claudia Zacchara did not “do” emotional scenes so she was not about to break down and admit how screwed over she really felt. One truly bad decision had altered the course of many lives one year ago and there was no going back.  
  
“Claudia, please don’t argue,” Johnny said. “You either pick up and go with me tonight or you end up in prison or dead. There is no other choice now that Morgan and his ex Sam found solid proof that you were behind the hit on Sonny. That you are the reason …”  
  
“Yeah. I’m the reason the little boy is in a coma and don’t think I don’t regret my choices that night. Cause I do, I really, really do. But if we run now, they’ll know what I did.”  
  
“Claudia, they _already_ know! I told you Maxie overheard them talking about the journal they found of Ian Devlin’s. They already suspected you, now they know without a doubt what you did.”  
  
Claudia loved her brother enough to not point out that he had been in on the deal with Devlin himself from the very beginning. The accusation was sitting on her tongue but she would never let her brother take the fall for any of the things that the Zacchara family did in secret.  
  
Just then they heard the door downstairs slam and the sound of voices below. Sonny and Jason’s voices – angry, full of rage, dead set on a vengeance. Claudia looked at Johnny. There was panic in her coal black eyes but she did her best to conceal the anxious feelings she had stirring inside her stomach. Still, she lived and died by denial and had to keep this charade going.  
  
“Dammit, Claudia, let’s go _now!”_ Johnny hissed and forcefully grabbed her arm and began yanking her out of her bedroom once again. The room Sonny had visited a time or two, just long enough to knock her up and leave her feeling more vulnerable than she ever had before.  
  
“Johnny, I’m bulletproof. I’ve got Sonny’s baby –“  
  
“Shut up!” Johnny hissed, clapping a hand down over his sister’s mouth. He held her tightly so she couldn’t move though she easily could have brought him to his knees, she chose not to. Let him play her rescuer if he chose to. Getting out of the Greystone for awhile would actually be welcome relief and she could always come back when things had cooled down a bit. Again, denial was a survival skill for the Zacchara kids. The only way they could have made it through their nightmarish childhood. Sure they had been scathed but they were alive – _physically,_ anyway.  
  
“I think they’re in the foyer,” Johnny whispered hoarsely. “If we can just get down the stairs ...” His voice trailed off as they neared the top of the stairs and surveyed the room below. No one was in sight although they could hear shouts of, “She needs to die tonight for what she did.” They didn’t know which of the two embittered men were saying those words and they didn’t care.  
  
“Does that convince you – _finally?”_ Johnny whispered.  
  
Claudia just nodded mutely and on wobbly legs, followed Johnny down the stairs. Just as they reached the bottom and were heading out to the patio to hopefully escape through the trees, they heard a voice say, “Going somewhere?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2/3**  
  
As he drove like a bat out of hell towards Sonny Corinthos’s penthouse, memories of her stained his mind like crimson blood. Like the very blood on Claudia’s hands. A saner man would have run the other way and not looked back but he couldn’t do that to her. Not when she needed him. She might never admit that she needed him – hell, she had spent the last year acting like he did not exist – but he knew somehow that she did. The only other person she had now in her corner was Johnny and he may be a decent brother but in the long run he was foolhardy and stupid and would mess this up. Mess up whatever he was about to do although he had no idea just yet what that was. All he could think about was how just two weeks ago he had heard through the ever-active Port Charles grapevine that she was carrying a child. He could only assume Sonny was the father and it almost made him violently ill. The man was a monster in his eyes and did not deserve to be a father to one child let alone half the population of New York …  
  
There was a time he and Claudia had talked about children. Having them together, that was. Long before she lost her innocence and her naiveté. People believed she had jumped from the crib to beating up on the world but that couldn’t be further from the truth. She had always been a bit rough around the edges that much was true but she hadn’t been so full of piss, vinegar and a rageful lust for vengeance. He never knew where they went wrong, how they ended up at such a crossroads that she had ended up leaving him and going off to Europe, seeming to forget all about him when he could unfortunately never do the same where she was concerned.  
  
God knows he had tried to forget her. Had been married once to a woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, the exact opposite of Claudia in every way. Thought having a wife who looked and acted nothing like the one who had come before her would chase away the memories, basically cure what ailed him. But it never did and somehow his wife had sensed that he was holding back a little piece of his soul and his heart and had ended up leaving him. He blamed himself for that. Just like he blamed himself for Claudia ending up in this boat that she found herself in now. He shouldn’t have let her push him aside the two times they had really talked, should have made her see that the games she was playing were dangerous, should have quite possibly held her hostage until she came to her senses and stopped playing with fire but he hadn’t had the courage and she had apparently had no desire to spend any significant amount of time with him.  
  
In public, they were adversaries. In private, he thought of her all the time and wondered if she ever thought of him, remembered the way they loved each other, lived for each other once upon a time, a time that seemed centuries and eons ago rather than just sixteen years. But when you were in love the way he had been – probably still was though he would be hard-pressed to admit it – sixteen years might as well be a lifetime apart from the one you wanted to be with, with all your heart and soul.  
  
He tried to clear his mind and focus on the task at hand; extracting her safely from the Corinthos fortress, but still the memories assailed him. The first time they made love, the first time she admitted she liked him enough to be serious about him, the time she actually used the three little words that he had waited to hear …  
  
_Never mind, focus, focus,_ he told himself and cursed in his second language.  
  
He finally arrived at the Corinthos mansion and jumped out of his car, drawing his gun immediately from its holster and inching around the back of the property to the patio. He took a deep breath as he hopped over the low wall and pulled open the back doors. Corinthos had possibly the worst security issues ever but it had worked to his advantage, _gracias dios._  
  
He was poised for whatever was coming but not the sight of her walking awkwardly down the stairs with her brother. Johnny. Yes, Johnny. Foolish, headstrong Johnny, who had seemed to come into the world thinking he owned it. He doubted that Johnny remembered him at all because it had been so many years and Johnny was just a child then. And in all their many dealings, Johnny had never given a hint of recognition either and of course he had never mentioned it.  
  
He held his breath as she came down the stairs and started for the backdoor. “Going somewhere?” He asked.  
  
She finally noticed him. Her eyes widened in surprise and shock. He thought he saw a flicker of something more there but then it was gone. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.  
  
“As if you don’t know, Ms. Zacchara – or should I say, Corinthos,” he said. “I have come to arrest you. You have a right to remain silent –“  
  
“The hell you are!” Johnny spat, stepping forward but he immediately sidestepped the younger man and walked over to Claudia, drawing her wrists behind her back and clamping cuffs over them, His hands shook a little as they touched her warm, supple skin but then he pulled away like she had burned him. “Let’s go.”  
  
Just then the door to the den flew open and Sonny and his crony Jason Morgan were standing there, their guns drawn and pointing right at him and Claudia. He instinctively moved in front of Claudia and held up a hand. “Good evening, Mr. Corinthos,” he said facetiously. “I am here to take your wife down for questioning in your son’s shooting.”  
  
He expected Claudia to say something to that but she remained quiet, almost disappointing him. He did glance back once at her to see her eyes water a bit, almost indiscernibly. Her expressions were slack but he could see she was more than a bit in shock.  
  
Sonny glared at them both. “Claudia, aren’t you going to deny you got my son shot?” he demanded. “Aren’t you going to keep lying to my damn face?!”  
  
Claudia shrugged now, trying to appear unrattled by the sight of two firearms inches from her face. “You are going to believe what you’re going to believe even if it’s all lies.”  
  
“The hell its lies! Except yours. All you did was tell lie after lie after –“  
  
“We get it, Sonny. Let the cop arrest Claudia and then open the case and it will prove she’s innocent,” Johnny spat out.  
  
“She’s not going anywhere,” Morgan finally spoke up.  
  
“As an upholder of the law and the one with the badge, I say differently,” he said. “You can visit her in jail from now on.”  
  
“Hey! Hey, I’m innocent,” Claudia said. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Sonny, call off this goon and let me talk to you.” She was bluffing. He could tell she was bullshitting Sonny and he couldn’t help but feel a little giddy over it.  
  
“Go with the fucking police officer. We’ll be right on your tail,” Sonny spat, right at his face. He simply wiped away the spittle and then turned and led Claudia from the house, followed closely by Johnny.  
  
Neither of them said a thing until they had reached the black and white. Then she turned to him and said, “What took you so long, brown eyes?"

Detective Cruz Rodriguez just shrugged and said, “Get into the back of the squad car. We have places to be …”


	3. Chapter 3

**Part 3/3**  
  
“I’m not some damsel in distress, just so you know,” Claudia said to Cruz as he helped her straighten her wig – a very blonde, very subdued wig. He then handed her a white, floral print dress next and she pulled a face. “I’m not wearing that.”  
  
“First of all, no one would ever mistake you for a damsel in distress, and second of all, yes you are if you expect to get out of Port Charles alive.”  
  
Claudia groaned and then nodded as she started to walk to the dressing room. She suddenly turned back and stared at him. “Why the hell are you doing all this for me, huh?”  
  
Cruz just shrugged. “I have no idea,” he answered truthfully. He turned around and walked away to go look for Johnny in the big confines of Wyndham’s. Cruz had helped Johnny break into the huge department store so they could get the Zaccharas disguises and then get them onto a plane out of the country before Sonny and Jason could track them down.  
  
They had managed to lose the mobsters by turning down different side streets but they knew there was now an APB out for their all of their arrests. They had heard it issued by Mac Scorpio over Cruz’s radio. They had then hidden the black and white in the bushes and come inside. Cruz had no idea how he was supposed to go back to “real life” after all this excitement. His life stretched before him seemingly in eons and he realized he had never felt as alive as he did now. At least not since the last time Claudia had been in his arms over sixteen years ago. He realized now how empty and lonely his days were and knew after Claudia was gone from his life forever, they would be even more so.  
  
Cruz found Johnny dressing in jeans and a long-sleeve tee-shirt in the men’s wear area. “Hey, hurry up we’ve got to get you and your sister to the airport,” Cruz said.  
  
“Not so fast,” Johnny said. “How do I know you’re really doing all this for Claudia’s benefit?”  
  
“Why would I do this for anyone else?” Cruz asked. “My name is now mud in this town and now I will too have a bull’s-eye on my back.”  
  
“But why are you doing it? What’s in it for you?” Johnny demanded as he slipped a New York Yankees cap down low over his forehead.  
  
“Just the peace of mind of knowing you and Claudia and her baby are alive and safe,” Cruz said honestly.  
  
“So you and Claudia were – what? Lovers at one time?”  
  
Cruz looked down at his shoes and nodded. “A long time ago …”  
  
XoXoXo  
  
They left Wyndham’s through the back entrance and found an abandoned mall security truck in the back parking lot. With Cruz’s help, Johnny jimmied the door open and killed the alarm immediately. Then he quickly hotwired the car as Claudia and Cruz watched. Claudia said in admiration, “My bro’s got skills.”  
  
Cruz almost laughed out loud. “For a life of crime, certainly.”  
  
Claudia sobered. “You know I didn’t ever want to hurt that little boy, never, ever …”  
  
Cruz nodded. “I know.”  
  
“When I think of someone doing the same to this baby inside me … Well, it makes me sick.” He thought he saw tears glisten in her dark eyes but then she turned her head away and climbed inside the security truck.  
  
“Let’s go,” Johnny called to Cruz. Cruz nodded and climbed behind the wheel. His arm brushed Claudia’s own left one as he got situated in the driver’s seat and it felt like it had been singed by liquid fire.  
  
“What airport are we going to?” Claudia asked.  
  
“JFK in New York City. We just have to clear the security check points and we’re off.”  
  
“Are we going to have a hard time doing that?” Johnny asked.  
  
“Nah. I know a circuitous route out of town. I used to explore the area on my days off …”  
  
“Sounds like buckets of fun,” Claudia said facetiously.  
  
“Hey, it passed the time,” Cruz said somewhat defensively.  
  
Johnny cleared his throat and spoke before Claudia could say anything. “So, uh, Cruz, are you …”  
  
“No, no I’m not going with you two.”  
  
Claudia’s dark eyes snapped to Cruz’s face. “Why the hell not?”  
  
“Because … because … It will look too suspicious having two men escort a woman onto the plane,” he said lamely.  
  
“You’re scared, brown eyes,” Claudia said.  
  
“Scared?” Cruz scoffed. “If I was scared of being caught I would never have come for you and-“  
  
“No, brown eyes, you’re scared of _me,”_ Claudia said. “You’re scared to get close to me again because you know I can blow your little ordered life apart like a gale force hurricane.”  
  
Cruz groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. Of course Claudia was right. He knew it and she knew it and Johnny probably knew it too, but Cruz would never admit it. “I am scared of nothing, especially not you, Claudia. You may talk a big game but I’ve got your number.”  
  
Claudia to his shock, laughed out loud. “What’s so funny?” He demanded.  
  
“You do talk and act like just a cop.”  
  
“Oh? Would someone with an honest cop's mentality help two wanted criminals out of town lines?”  
  
“No but you’ve got a cop’s good intentions in your blood. You like to play hero and you always have … I guess, well, I guess it’s actually a good thing you’re not coming along, brown eyes,” she said.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because,” she said in the softest tone he had ever heard her use before, “I could fall in love with you all over again.”  
  
XoXoXo  
  
****_Seven months later  
Cuba_  
  
A tall bearded man with jet black hair weaved his way through a grove of thick trees, pushing aside low branches as he went to keep them from scratching his face. He finally reached his destination and stopped in front of a huge, sprawling estate with high walls. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. They still insisted on living in grandiose style. Yet so far, they had managed to stay under the radar.  
  
He approached the porch and taking a deep breath, he lightly rapped on the door, feeling his stomach twisting in knots but determined not to turn and run away like he longed to. Because he longed to be _here_ more.  
  
The door opened and Johnny Zacchara stood there watching him. “Cru-“  
  
“Manuel,” he corrected him.  
  
_“Manuel,”_ Johnny said.  
  
“I’m not too late am I?” he asked.  
  
“No, _Manny,_ no,” the other man said with a little smile. “Come on in to our humble home.”  
  
The term “humble home” was laughable but he said nothing.  
  
“Right through there,” Johnny said. “She’ll be glad to see you.”  
  
“I hope so,” he said. He slowly pushed open the pastel-colored door and walked inside. He found her sitting in an Oakwood rocking chair, rocking back and forth and whispering softly to a tiny, black-haired baby. As he approached, he could tell it was a little boy but fortunately he looked nothing like his biological father. He had Johnny’s eyes and lips and Claudia’s bronzed complexion and mischievous smile.  
  
She finally spoke up without turning in her chair. “What took you so long, brown eyes?” she asked.  
  
“You don’t seem surprised that I’m here,” he said.  
  
“I knew you’d come eventually,” she said.  
  
“Why is that?”  
  
“Because you never could stay away. You are a glutton for punishment if I have ever known one.”  
  
He didn’t say anything as he inched, almost timidly, over to her and the little boy. “What’s his name?”  
  
“Guess.”  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
“It’s Roberto.”  
  
Cruz’s eyes moistened a bit. “You named him after my father? Why?”  
  
“I wanted to thank you somehow,” she answered. “And this was the best way I could think of. Now take a seat because we have a lot of catching up to do …”  
  
**.finis.**


End file.
